1st power up test: PSUs all right and drive_0 LED lit. - good
bad - 1) micro seemed to be sweating a bit (56C in a 25C ambient) - 2) freewheel diode in 5V PSU way too hot, probably inappropriate, I'll look at a swap
RS232 comms not yet tested, I'll try to do that tomorrow - might be able to check out throttle interface too

good news - you're way ahead of me now (won't be home til next week)
microcontrollers are pretty simple to drive, give it 5V and it will strut its stuff - The fun starts in the application.....
hopefuuly it has a goodly ground plane & reasonable power net route and should behave OK - being small is an advantage too

Back to work.... OK there was a problem with the 15V switcher, it was the tantalum capacitor, these are simply too good (very low parasitics) and it was stopping the control loop in the LM5017 working properly. I swapped the capacitor for an Al can electrolytic & all was sweetness and light (+ on board temperatures reduced by nearly 100 degrees !!!!) A change to the feedback circuit would also have worked (even better) but would cost time (re-layout) and frankly this is totally good enough.
Oh yeah, changed the diode on the 5V supply for a shottky - that brought local temps down by 40 to 50degrees too..

months maybe years Andy....
Plugged it into RS232 & plugged setup jumper; yep all good.
plugged in a thumb throttle, calibrated, coefficients 1 0 0 throttle test perfect.
Looking good so far!
Needs a power stack to get much further, I can check gate drive PWM but that's about it.

Question for Lebowski.....
The pickit interface: microchip say that to use the debugger you can't have pullups on PGD and PGC.
The standard control board (and this little one) DO have both pullups on these pins AND a PICkit interface. Does this lead to reprogramming problems? - did you ever use the PICkit interface on the board?
I ask because if I need to reprogram for whatever reason, I will be sending you the whole board (not just the chip) and expecting you to use the PICkit programming interface

bobc wrote:Question for Lebowski.....
The pickit interface: microchip say that to use the debugger you can't have pullups on PGD and PGC.
The standard control board (and this little one) DO have both pullups on these pins AND a PICkit interface. Does this lead to reprogramming problems? - did you ever use the PICkit interface on the board?
I ask because if I need to reprogram for whatever reason, I will be sending you the whole board (not just the chip) and expecting you to use the PICkit programming interface

I use my standard board for development of the controller IC and reprogram the chip daily but I never use the debug feature, only the programming feature and I can imagine it is different.

That's good. Having fried an IO port on one, I'll swap it for an empty chip & post it to you to see how it goes.
Having the "plug" on the control board makes it almost inevitable that you'll tater it during debug, I'm swapping everything to having a socket on the little board and the "plug" on the inverter...
Like Voltan did above.

Been quiet for a bit - working through power supply issues.
The main issue is that some retard at work had put a red plug on a black wire & corresponding black plug on red wire (of some clip=on power leads). I've been zapping stuff with negative polarity for weeks. Good trick to remember if you really want to do somebody's head in.
So, 3 working boards now, just need some passives adding.
And a corresponding power board...........

Looking forward to the progress. got no time in the next few weeks though as busy building the office. So so busy. after that its paternity leave so i should have a bit of spare time then. but probably less than id like.

So I have one of bobc prototypes and boards but don't have the kicad/Gerber files. I have his brothers email/number who now has his laptop but they can't get into it and I haven't really followed it up as I am too busy. I think the way forward with and microlebowski lies with Andy(animalector) I hope that eventually he produces a PCB for just the brain and get a few batch produced and populated with smd passives so that people can role there own power boards.

One day i hope to get back to this but at the moment I have one small boy and one on the way.

Well that's good or bad news for Bob and company depending on their perspectives on death. I don't know him at all, but I believe in an after life...define that as you will...so I'm sure he's just moved on to the next great thing. It just sucks for family and friends left behind.

Does anyone have those boards he took pictures of in partly complete states? If I had the schematic and actual hardware, making this move forward again would still be possible. The board layout would be good too! I bet if I had his hard drive, I could get at the data on it. Of course there has to be lots of people in the UK that can do what I can do with his hard drive.

whereswally606 wrote:I have sent an email to Bobs brother Nick, My last contact was in June so its a bit of a last chance saloon. He has bobs laptop and may have done something with it.

Thanks for the interest, cant say I agree with your interpretation of the thereafter, I am of the opinion this is all you get, when its over its over.

You are entitled to your beliefs as am I about mine. Your perspective is a common one and honestly neither one of us can prove the other wrong or right. AS good as it gets, you believe what you believe and I believe what I believe.

Hopefully we will hear something useful back from Nick. Thank you for reaching out to him.

First off thanks for all the kind comments about my brother Bob (bobc on here), in the RIP thread too.
He was an amazing guy, we were all hit hard by his passing.

As for Bob's hard drives, I can't login to Win10, but it was easy to mount them in a usb sata dock and get the files.
I've sent what I think is the right folder including kikad files to whereswally606.

First off thanks for all the kind comments about my brother Bob (bobc on here), in the RIP thread too.
He was an amazing guy, we were all hit hard by his passing.

As for Bob's hard drives, I can't login to Win10, but it was easy to mount them in a usb sata dock and get the files.
I've sent what I think is the right folder including kikad files to whereswally606.

I have received a zip from Nick, like his brother he was kind, he has found and given the project data over that Bob and I were working on the emaxes for. I haven't had much time to digest any much of it yet but I found a how to document Bob had written to help amateurs like myself construct the smd brain board.

Steps now.
1. See if I can get the one off prototype which was left by Bob to talk to my computer and then talk to some gate drives to drive the emax scooter motor with the mti 6pack chip (run the motor)

2. If happy with the boards in that I'm sure they work and are easy enough for peeps like me to work with I will order a batch from pcbway and distribute like I have the through hole boards for the lebowski project these past couple of years.

3. If I find more time and money I may finish my mpcnc project and see if I can make a pick n place machine to batch produce completed boards which should be plug and play so people can role their own power boards to suit their projects.

I have no time frame yet for this but I would like to talk it over with Bas and get his blessing before going ahead and making any of bobs work public.

a massive thanks to Nick Carter for allowing us to continue Bob's work/play.

a mini thanks to electricGod for the bump of this thread and encouragement to followup on my last email to Nick, without encouragement it's easy for other projects to take higher priority.

Thanks Bas, will look over the files from Bob over the next week and look to see how much work is involved in making the boards fully vs just buying a batch of the PCBs and the costs involved.

I've been looking through the files and updated my kicad install to play nicely with Bob's newer projects. There is a nice new 3d modeller here so here is a virtual board and Bob's how to document to show that indeed he must have intended this for a wider audience than just us two.

this is an actual spreadsheet
here is an incomplete part of the puzzle. I don't know the values for the voltages of caps or the power ratings for the resistors, any other missing bits of info to complete a components order. I've reached out to Bas and hopefully these blanks can be worked out so I can get some parts ordered. Feel free to help if you think you can.

So ive been doing some internet searches on the parts in Bobs BOM, wow,

I have been looking at the big companies like digikey and farnell but for small amounts there is always some added rereel fee and large shipping charge.

This has pushed me to go to ebay and china getting sample sets of resistors and caps and chips.

The most expensive single part is the pic chip which is £7.68

The switching regulators are also quite pricey. Mainly cause that seller charges £2 shipping for each item (4 lots, 10x lm5017 and 10x mpc16301). I will see whether I can get a batch delivery discount.

That said my cost for about 10 lots of components via Ebay is about £53. and then £7.68 for each chip.

That means in raw cost I'm in the region of about £5.30 + 7.68 = £12.98 before the PCB cost.
Then my time which I haven't factored in.

Is there any demand here for

1) a kit containing all the parts for making a Lebowski bob carter brain board + PCB for about £25

or

2) a fully made brain board. more like £50 or more cause I don't have the experience to know how much this might cost yet.